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Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

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Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#111

Post by Snowdax »

shazow wrote: post #16
jc4p wrote: post #5

I have an Oculus CV1, I had the DK2, and I've been making VR side-projects using their SDK for a couple years now. I'm really disillusioned about Oculus as a platform, though. I didn't even consider buying the HTC Vive because I've been riding the Oculus train for a while and had faith in them as the future of VR, but come on. I really wish I could know how Carmack feels about this. Sidenote: for what it's worth, I h…

> I really wish I could know how Carmack feels about this. My impression is that Carmack is working on GearVR-related stuff in isolation from the rest of the Oculus/Facebook bureaucracy from the comfort of Dallas, TX. Hard to tell, but I'm not convinced he's even aware (or cares) about what's going on with Oculus in general: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/733761224098242560

Carmack tends to not particularly care what the business side are up to. He wants to focus on pushing the tech forward and not get bogged down with the office politics or PR spinning beyond what he's forced to do.

Hence John Romero...

Carmack is more of a Woz type character, hence why there is great respect for him in the industry. Many a developer merely dreams of being let loose on the tech and not have to deal with any of the "bullshit".

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#112

Post by X-Cubed »

hbosch wrote: post #101
errantspark wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear you expand on that, perhaps we don't align on the definition of elegant? I think the Lighthouse system is elegant specifically because it doesn't use cameras at all. That's what makes it so cool is that it's not limited by sensor resolution, to get really accurate tracking using cameras you need to crunch a LOT of data really quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if it's order's of magnitude less computat…

> I think the Lighthouse system is elegant specifically because it doesn't use cameras at all. Not to be purposefully pedantic, so please excuse me, but aren't the small "dimples" on the Vive hardware technically very simple, low-res infrared cameras that are designed to pick up the Lighthouse lasers?

They're photodiodes, so each one is only capturing a single luminance value, they're not capturing an image.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#113

Post by yarrel »

errantspark wrote: post #53

Been working on VR side projects for 3 years now, I've built against the DK1, DK2, CV1 and the Vive and I have to say there's zero question in my mind that Oculus is FAR behind the curve. The Vive was love at first sight, the Oculus was quite the opposite. The Vive is stunning, not only because room-scale VR is fantastic. (I don't share the opinion that the future rests solely with room scale, there's plenty of stuff…

The CV1 that Oculus gave me, which I'm very grateful for, won't even turn on when I plug it in. I'm not installing Windows and a sub-Steam walled garden to use it. I should have kept the DK1. :-/

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#114

Post by hola_hola »

ericjang wrote: post #106
tk32 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

I only learned this recently, but it's actually spelled "just deserts". Although desserts (sweet confections) are often associated with rewards, the word "deserts" refers to the element of distributive justice. Source: I wrote a paper about this for a class and got a C+.

So why the c+? Seems rather informative. Just learned something new.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#115

Post by lobster_johnson »

ericjang wrote: post #106
tk32 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

I only learned this recently, but it's actually spelled "just deserts". Although desserts (sweet confections) are often associated with rewards, the word "deserts" refers to the element of distributive justice. Source: I wrote a paper about this for a class and got a C+.

Deserts is an archaic word meaning "reward", i.e. a kind of noun form of "deserve".

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#116

Post by zanny »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #103
zanny wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The natural progression of all software industries has always been to use proprietary first movers to dominate and control the market with DRM and lockin, burn it down, destroy all consumer and fan engagement, and then slowly flicker out where the corporate goliath that dominated first is eventually supplanted by an open community that should have been there in the first place, but everyone drank the koolaid. Be it w…

Wow sounds positively Marxist. Some imaginary 'natural' progression is not really science, its just a convenient narrative. Anything can happen, including folks abandoning open source and embracing a new walled garden (think iPhone). Don't have to look far at all to see refutation of the convenient storyline.

There was never an open source smartphone app-based OS before iOS, and Android has demonstrated an open source alternative that has risen in the wake of the iPhones success to take 80% of the market, which absolutely supports the narrative.

Also, comparing observable industry trends to Marxism is on par with Godwin's law. Obviously you are a communist if you observe natural trends in software towards open interoperability and/or community participation in development of established paradigms?

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#117

Post by jean_claude »

lacksconfidence wrote: post #90
colejohnson66 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it need DRM? Can you imagine if you bought a monitor and it turned out you could only run specific programs and could only use approved peripherals? "Oh, you can't run Google Chome, but we have an amazing equivalent: Oculus Explorer! We're also gonna monitor your mouse movements for the purpose of improving your customer experience. In addition, to ensure a consistent UX, you can only use Oculus approved mic…

Oculus DRM doesn't work like that at all. Anyone can program against the oculus API and release software for it. It's not like there is a standard VR api (OpenVR is anything but, it's controlled by a single company with their own intentions).

Correct, it's more like buying Microsoft Flight Simulator and not being able to run it because your monitor is not a genuine Microsoft monitor.

Oculus DRM works by locking the "Oculus exclusive" software to the Oculus hardware. Hackers, of course, have cracked that nut, so the usual arms race against offensive DRM has begun.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#118

Post by rpgmaker »

istorical wrote: post #80
pekk wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is grossly deceptive to say that Steam has a monopoly on games distribution when a vast number of the games on Steam are also distributed by other channels. I can't name any "Steam exclusives," which is more than I can say for Origin etc. Frankly it's absurd to psychoanalyze Steam, saying that it wants to do what other companies are doing, and not to recognize that if it wanted to do those things it could easily d…

It's not a de jure monopoly, it's a de facto monopoly. When a gamer thinks "I wanna buy this game", 90% of them go immediately to Steam. It's a monopoly in the sense that it's practically financial suicide for a games developer to NOT sell their game through Steam. Whether or not they really "have to" is besides the point if the reality is they'll not make a positive return on their game if they skip out on selling o…

It's pretty much the same situation that book publishers find themselves in with Amazon. Valve just hasn't shown its scumbag side yet.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#119

Post by khedoros »

napperjabber wrote: post #108
tk32 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so satisfying watching them get their just desserts after betraying their Kickstarter backers by taking the Facebook money and then going back on all their words about keeping the platform free for everybody. Meanwhile that acquisition kicked off a race among the other big players which Valve appears to be winning while having the best features. I mean, Valve isn't perfect, but they're a lot better than Facebook…

At first I defended the Facebook buyout because it seemed like a logical move. I feel Oculus was pressured into the buyout because valve was about to kill them. Truth is, Carmarck joining the team made it all that much sweeter. If you read through the lines of some of Palmer's communications, it's obvious that there is a rift between Oculus and Facebook that no one is talking about. Carmarck, being Carmarck keeps pus…

> Carmarck

Carmack. Only one 'r' in the name.

Re: Growing Rift Between Valve and Oculus

#120

Post by errantspark »

yarrel wrote: post #113
errantspark wrote: post #53

Been working on VR side projects for 3 years now, I've built against the DK1, DK2, CV1 and the Vive and I have to say there's zero question in my mind that Oculus is FAR behind the curve. The Vive was love at first sight, the Oculus was quite the opposite. The Vive is stunning, not only because room-scale VR is fantastic. (I don't share the opinion that the future rests solely with room scale, there's plenty of stuff…

The CV1 that Oculus gave me, which I'm very grateful for, won't even turn on when I plug it in. I'm not installing Windows and a sub-Steam walled garden to use it. I should have kept the DK1. :-/

I have experienced a whole host of problems with the CV1, the DK2 is currently my goto headset as it pretty much just works and since the resolution/refresh rate isn't absurd I can drive it even on modest hardware.
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